Well I am sure there would be more enticed customers if the games were cheaper, but these games are quite addictive and Sean does most of the work on the games himself. I believe Sean also makes his living mostly from work he does programming, but I am not completely sure about that. If these games were like $10 each and like $25 or $30 for all, you would be that I'd buy multiple copies for me and my friends. But since it is $40 (or $45 for everything), I will probably just get them for me for now. Anyways, have a good day everyone.

Given that thay are available with free try-before-you-buy only people who really enjoy them are going to buy them.
A movie comes at a price of over $2 an hour.
I have got way more than 20 hours of fun out of all the games and expect to get a lot more.

It would best if you got the $45 deal for everything. That is the best value by far. I would spend the extra $5 to get everything because I am thinking about purchasing a handheld PC (or whatever they are). Thus, I should most likely purchase this one. By the way, can you buy multiple licenses for these games if you have multiple computers in the house without having to pay $45 over?

I am not sure I agree about most games not allowing lifetime upgrades. However, there is both a right and wrong about this. Games that last long enough usually let you download free patches and upgrades from the site (then there are games like "The Sims" where you can do little with that, but the expansion packs give you FAR more than any upgrade). Usually these upgrades stop after a few years as the game gets old. That's the difference between those games and Sean's. So that's good on Sean's part.

One thing about networking is that, unfortunately, it is hard to find people who have the game and are able to play at the time. There are not many newbies either. There needs to be some way in which you can easily find players to play against. Does anyone know how to do this?

Sadly, I have to continue on that this game is too expensive. Warfare incorporated, another GREAT game for just about any handheld, caught my attention all summer. And at $30, that was a good deal. It was extensive with graphics, plot, etc. It also had multiplayer play over bluetooth and internet.

Although I've tucked Warfare away, and although I've played the demo conquest about 200 times, I think $20 is far too high. I must admit, it is a good game to be created by only one person. However, lowering the price $10 dollars would be wise, I think. Most of the other software sold at places like Pocket Gear go for less than ten, and I do believe they are of equivilant value.

Another feature of Warfare I loved... level editor. I like the way you can make your own maps in Conquest. I even made one of my own, although I was unable to test it. Please, if not for my sake, make the game cheaper so others can play my level.

Life's lessons I have already learned:
Everything is relative.
Life works in balances.
There is no good nor evil in this world.

Sean, like any businessman with bills to pay is trying to maximise his income.
If he halved the price would he get more sales? Yes, certainly he would but would be make twice as many sales? Probably not. Therefore it's not echomonicly sensible to halve the price.

If he doubled the price would he still get sales? Yes, but probably less than 50% what he gets now. So again not a wise price change.

Certainly as customers we would all like to see smaller prices, but I think that compared to other similar products Sean's prices are perfectly reasonable.

This conversation has popped up from time to time on my message boards over the years but my answer is always going to be that I'm not going to drop the prices. Budget games on the shelves probably used to sell for loads more when they were brand new and now they're selling off the old stock on the cheap. Or they're just rubbish! You can get freeware copies of Risk - they're just not very good.

Bear in mind that RegNow takes a 20% cut of my selling price (and if the sale goes through an affiliate I get less than half the selling price) then RegNow charges me to wire the money over, then my bank charges me to convert the money to pounds. And the pound is very strong against the dollar at the moment too

I can tell you from my own experience as a software developer that what Sean is asking for his software is very reasonable.

Consider the fact that if you wanted a program like Conquest written but none yet existed you would have to pay a software developer at LEAST $20 an hour (usually MUCH more) and that he would probably spend at the very least a WEEK writing a program as sophisticated as Conquest.

These are very conservative estimates and in reality most of the custom software development I do for my clients involve several developers and costs many thousands of dollars to fully develop and implement.

I realize Conquest is not a business application and therefore business would not finance its development but you should get some idea of how much software costs to develop.

I would say it is impossible for a developer writing software for the public to make anything close to what they could be making writing software for businesses. If selling his softwate to the public is Sean's primary source of income then I am very impressed.

The Conquest map editor program I wrote is a very good application worth at least a $5 donation in my opinion yet I would be very surprised if all the donations I get over its lifetime total over $100. Most people will use it and not send a donation. I accept that fact.

Luckily... I have a corporate development job that pays my bills with no worries